


come as you are

by grapehyasynth



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Episode: s03e13 Grad Night, Introspection, M/M, No dialogue not a bit, Notions of identity, POV Patrick Brewer, Patrick spirals a bit, Pre-date jitters, Process of finding himself, Sartorial discontent, The process of coming out to oneself, Yall I don't know how to tag someone help meeeee, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29094900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: Patrick has some pre-first date jitters as he thinks about who he is and what this date means
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 29
Kudos: 179





	come as you are

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna be honest, I don't know what this is. I wrote alldaydream and reymanova a few weeks ago when i was feeling emotional about patrick choosing such a public place for his first date with a man and then i interrupted a workout like 20 times so that i could start writing this and then i ended up hating half of it so i decided not to post it and then i dumped two scenes and added a bunch to one of the existing scenes and i didn't even tell my beta that i made those changes sorry sarah ily. This is... this is Patrick's head, via me, I suppose. I am generally very fond of dialogue and this has not one single line of dialogue, so when I tell you that I have no idea what this is, please believe me

Patrick has his first little gay spiral on the walk home from work, when he sees the entire Jazzagals troupe flocking to the cafe. 

Well, there’s his first problem. He’s not even sure he’s gay. 

Just last week, when he’d had his first appointment with his new general practitioner, there’d been a space on the intake forms to indicate _patient sexuality_. His pen had hovered over each of the boxes in turn. There weren’t even that many options - definitely fewer options than there should be, he thinks - but he’s never looked beyond the _heterosexual_ box before, never had to consider the options. 

Checking _heterosexual_ had felt like a lie. He considered _bisexual_ , but then he started doing comparisons in his head, calculating how he’s felt about people of different genders in his past, and it - it hadn’t been helpful. He’s not sure he can rule that one out yet, but it’s _gay_ that he kept looking at. It’s _gay_ that did something funny to his whole cardiovascular system. 

_Gay_. The box had said _gay/lesbian_ and Patrick remembers thinking, _I haven’t earned that_. 

It felt too big and too final and too clear-cut. The boxes made it look like it should be easy. 

He’d left that section blank, and his doctor had been too busy to follow up on his omission. Patrick had been both relieved and very, very disappointed. He’s thought about it all week. 

And now he’s asked David out on a date, when he’s not even sure what he is, and he sees the crowd outside the cafe and realizes he couldn’t have chosen a more public place to try to figure all this out. Should he have picked somewhere more discreet? Everyone will know, within ten minutes, that he and David are on a date. It’s not exactly an easy way to go about finding himself. 

Maybe being in public will keep him from doing something he regrets, keep him from going too far in either direction. With everyone watching, he can’t pretend it’s not a date; with everyone watching, he can’t try to prove himself too hard, too fast. If they went to the Italian place in Elmdale - if he could even get a reservation this late - he fears his resolve would flit away into the dark corners, take shelter in the shadows again. And he doesn’t want that. 

Because he wants to go on a date with David. That much, he’s managed to admit to himself. And the thought of everyone seeing and knowing, when he can’t even say _gay_ to himself - it’s terrifying, it has him panicking on the stretch of sidewalk outside Ray’s house, but he’s also giddy. _Giddy_ \- there’s no other word for it. He’s never been giddy for a date before. He’s been giddy about test results when he thinks he’s done well; he’s been giddy for baseball games - ones he’s played in, ones he’s attended; he’s been giddy for cousins who got pregnant and for that awards ceremony where his mom was recognized for twenty years with her firm. But a date? Never like this. Excited, sure. It would be unfair to Rachel to rewrite that part of their history. He’d enjoyed their dates, but in the sense that it was the most fun he had all week, hanging out with his best friend. Never _giddy_. 

So yeah, maybe some of the panic is worry that he’ll realize halfway through the date that he’s _not_ gay, and maybe some of the panic is an expectation that he’ll get rejected because he’s never kissed a guy before, but there’s also a part of the panic that comes from really, really wanting this date to go well. He wants that _so much_. And not even to prove anything; not even to figure anything out, though he wants that too. He just - he wants there to be more dates with David, and he hasn’t even been on one with him yet. 

He thinks about David’s secret little smile when he’d accepted the invitation, and he wonders what David will wear. 

And that brings him to his second panic.

He doesn’t have anything to wear. 

His mom would laugh at him if he said that, standing in front of his open closet, staring down a rack of blue shirts. (He shouldn’t think about his mom and closets and dates with David in the same mental space; one big, scary life step at a time.) Technically he _has things to wear_ , but nothing worthy of a date with David. David’s a very visual person, and he’ll notice Patrick’s outfit immediately. 

He thinks he can deprioritize bottoms - they’ll be sitting most of the evening, his legs will be hidden under the table. But what if he walks David home? Or what if he drives David home and has a chance to open the door for him and his legs are _right there_ for David to look at and judge? (He acknowledges there might be a scenario in which David looks at his legs and doesn’t care so much about what’s on them, but he - Patrick’s really not there yet, in terms of hopes for the evening. He needs to make it through the appetizers alive, at the very least.)

And David’s seen all of his button-ups and button-downs already, and they’re the nicest shirts he owns. He’s probably worn most of these shirts on dates with Rachel. He was probably wearing one the night he proposed. He wishes he could remember which one, so he could make sure not to wear it tonight. It’s - he knows it’s probably unrealistic to expect that he can make a clear delineation between that person and this one, to think that who he’s been before would be irrelevant to the choice of which box to check on the doctor’s forms. He just thinks it would be easier - fewer variables, less contamination, more clarity - if there was a _then_ and a _now_ , instead of a... _this is who I’ve always been but I didn’t know._

Maybe he doesn’t want that either, though. Because more than anything he wants his parents to know, when he tells them - and he will tell them, someday, when he understands himself a bit better - he wants them to know that he’s the same as he’s ever been. Can he be both? Can he be the same when he’s brand new? 

He adds it to the list of questions to try to wrap his head around when he’s not scrambling to get ready for an all-important first date. 

He wonders if Ray would loan him something. That’s how he _really_ knows he’s panicking. A black turtleneck or something that at least has stripes; something that David’s never seen before. He wonders if Ted - 

No. _Stop_. David doesn’t want to date Ray or Ted. Or, well, Patrick doesn’t know that, but he knows that David’s not spending his birthday evening with either of them. He’s spending it with Patrick. 

He takes out a blue shirt that he thinks David complimented. He’d called it _a very calming cerulean_ , if Patrick’s remembering correctly. 

Maybe David doesn’t expect the people he dates to have the same fashion sense that he does. He’d been with Stevie, and she definitely doesn’t dress anything like David. (Closets, his mother, Stevie - he’s got a growing list of topics to try to avoid mentioning on this date.) 

He hopes David will feel generous and forgiving and will still like him if the best he can muster is the cerulean shirt and a dinner jacket. 

He wonders if he’s supposed to tie his shoes differently now, or do something new with his hair. He doesn’t have time, and he hopes he doesn’t regret that - doesn’t look back and think _if only I’d used a little hair gel, maybe the course of my life would’ve been different_. He tries on a tie, but it doesn’t - it doesn’t feel like him, and as big and new as all this is, he still wants to feel like himself. He hopes that that’s what David wants too - just for Patrick to be Patrick. 

This is new to him, weighing what other people think against what he wants for himself. Well, caring what other people think isn’t new, but his goals and preferences had generally aligned with what everyone else wanted for him, from him. Now they’re not fitting neatly together, and he has to wonder things like _am I dressing in a way that my date will like_ and _will my parents still love me_ because he can no longer be confident that it all neatly fits together, that he knows the rules of the game, that he’s capable of playing it. His parents, his friends, his extended family, strangers on the street - he _thinks_ they’d all be okay with this, with who he is, and he _thinks_ David will still like him no matter what he wears tonight, but he doesn’t know, and having to make decisions without the steady framework of expectation and obligation and tradition to hold him up? Well. It’s not something he’s really had to grapple with before. 

He thinks it might be the most alone he’s ever felt. He wonders if this is why people avoid things, avoid even admitting things to themselves, to try to forestall this aloneness. He feels stripped of what he knows.

He lets out a shuddering breath and smoothes the shirt he’s still holding. He’s being dramatic. It’s just like going into a job interview, as he’d told dozens of younger students that he mentored in college: at some point, you have to present yourself as you are and accept that you might not fit the bill, but it’s not a reflection on you. He will wear this shirt, and he will wear a suit jacket, because that’s what a first date with David deserves. He will get there early enough to peruse the menu and select his top three entree options. He will plan a joke or two to make David roll his eyes, but he’ll probably forget them the second David walks in the door, like he does every day at work. 

He doesn’t know if it will be enough for David, and he doesn’t know how it will fit against the idea of him that his parents and his friends and those strangers on the street might have, and he still doesn’t know what damn box he’s supposed to check on those forms - but he’s run out of time to panic, and it’s time to present himself as he is. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] come as you are](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29973471) by [hullomoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hullomoon/pseuds/hullomoon)




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